Here is a short partial list of logical fallacies with one current example of each. I hope this might enable people studying logical fallacies to understand them better.
Straw Man
A straw man fallacy occurs when someone misrepresents or distorts the argument of an opponent, therefore both addressing a false position and potentially making the argument easier to refute.
"The Bible is evil because it condones slavery. What kind of benevolent deity would not only permit but REGULATE an activity as abominable and dehumanizing as one human owning another??"
This example of the fallacy I provided strongly implied that the slavery in the Bible is abusive, degrading, and involuntary along with the slavery practiced by other groups throughout history. But anyone who objectively studies the Old Testament legal texts knows this view is false and actually represents the antithesis of Biblical slavery [1]. Of course, this doesn't prevent the new atheists from relentlessly accusing the Bible of evil. Another instance of a straw man would be if I told someone that we cannot know if the external world our senses currently perceive is the real objective external world and the other person said to a third party that I had argued that the world around me isn't real. Of course, I had never said that what my sense perceive isn't real, only that it may not represent the true external world, and I never claimed there is no external world.
Begging the Question
Begging the question is when someone simply assumes a premise of an argument to be true without any justification for this belief.
"It is obvious that listening to metal music is sinful. Why? It just is! It's obvious!"
"Do you really need proof that wearing a bikini in public is just wrong? It's like wearing your underwear in front of other people!"
"I'll tell you what happens when we die. We cease to exist entirely. There is no afterlife; the concept is another lie invented by religion."
Positing a point or premise as true without any proof or defense does not mean the point is obvious, it means the one in favor of the premise cannot intellectually justify their belief. People, Christian or not, seem to particularly resort to this fallacy in an attempt to verify their moral preferences. For instance, if I ask pro-"modesty" people why wearing a bikini in public is wrong and the they reply that it is like wearing underwear in public, they have not answered my question but have merely rephrased their conclusion. They have shown that the two sets of clothing are similar but not that they are immoral. I could then ask why wearing underwear in public is wrong, and they could either keep producing analogies that don't actually demonstrate that they are right or they could admit that they can't identify a valid reason why wearing underwear/bikinis publicly is objectively wrong. A similar conversation would occur if someone said abortion is wrong because it is equivalent to murder but they couldn't show that murder is wrong. As for the third example, no atheist can prove anything about the afterlife, so making an epistemic and ontological claim about what happens after death is ludicrous. Anyone who makes similar statements is entirely begging the question. It is very easy to ignore or fail to detect this fallacy unless one has conditioned himself or herself to become a strict rationalist.
Ad Hominem
Someone uses an ad hominem when they oppose an argument out of dislike for the one offering it.
"No, of course we shouldn't follow any economic policy recommended by Hitler. I mean, Hitler was a horrific monster."
While it is true that Hitler was an evil individual, his malicious moral beliefs have nothing to do with whether or not his economic ideas are pragmatically successful or rational. For instance, I have many reasons to intellectually dislike Richard Dawkins, especially when it comes to his philosophy, but I must evaluate every individual point he asserts instead of dismissing them just because he is incorrect the vast majority of the time.
Appeal to Tradition
This fallacy capitalizes on the tendency of some people to cling to a belief because it is a tradition of their family, country, neighborhood, or personal life.
"America has always defined marriage as between a man and a woman, and since that's how our law has always defined it we should not change the definition now!"
This example uses a frustratingly inadequate logical argument to support a correct conclusion. People like to rely on this sort of argument when they have exhausted their other "evidences". Interestingly, people will selectively and therefore inconsistently argue like this--a modern conservative American might use this logic to attack homosexual marriage but probably won't use it to endorse misogyny and other cruel historical practices.
Appeal to Emotion
Emotional appeals seek to persuade the target audience on an emotional level by manipulating the feelings of audience members instead of proving something through logical reasoning.
"Everyone has the right to believe in whatever comforts them. Why would you not believe in God? Faith provides people with something to stave off depression and to give them hope."
I don't care if people derive hope from something. As a rationalist I can no longer respond to assumptions and irrationality with anything besides either indifference or hostility. I want people to have hope solely in knowledge of the truth and nothing else, no matter how emotionally attached they are to inferior alternatives. If God doesn't exist, people have no intellectual right to believe in him no matter what comfort their belief offers and in such a world without God there can be nothing morally good about helping others avoid despair because in an atheistic universe there is no good or evil. Defending a premise because of emotional attachment is dangerous, because we can allow ourselves to bond to an idea that may be false. Emotions can celebrate discovered truths, but no one can justify belief in anything at all based on malleable, fluctuating, and subjective feelings.
Appeal to Popularity
This fallacy refers to citing majority agreement as evidence or proof for a statement or concept.
"Murder is clearly wrong because every society has legislated against it. This proves that murder is morally wrong."
Now, this again takes a true conclusion ("Murder is . . . wrong") and uses a terrible argument in an effort to establish this. Murder is not wrong because of any alleged consistency in social laws or customs throughout history, it is objectively wrong because it illicitly extinguishes a human life. To demonstrate that human life must not be illicitly destroyed, one must prove that human life can have value, and to prove this one must show that a God exists. Human consensus or political legislation has nothing to do with whether or not murder is morally wrong--besides, people almost never agree about moral propositions, and if so the agreement usually doesn't last very long.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/slavery.html
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